Monday, May 29, 2006

Mr. Duck Steps Out

Thanks to Hans Perk for supplying the animator draft for this cartoon. You can see the original studio documentation over at his blog. There's lots of other interesting material there, too, including his company's demo reel.

The mosaics took longer to put together than I expected, so I'll hold off talking about this cartoon until later. It's available on DVD on The Chronological Donald Volume 1.

11 comments:

Great work, Mark! A few things: 82 = Sc. 78.6 Allen (as 81).84-86 = Sc. 78.8 Lundy. All one scene.I can imagine it was somewhat of a puzzle. With a scene missing on the draft, even :-)After having looked at Alberto's Page once more, I'm now SURE of Larry Clemmons and Ken Petersen...

Also: 72-74: Patin. It is one scene. They did camera cuts inside the scene - makes it look like a new scene - but it is just another field, with continuing material. You see he was credited differently for different parts of the scene in the footage count column.

I know what you mean about the new view you get when watching with the draft next to it...

As to #72-74: I see! A C.U. of Donald was cut in the middle of the original sc. 77.7! How interesting! I suspect that the second part was Patin, but the middle may be someone else, as it was obviously a late decision. Also interesting is seeing the other differences with the draft, e.g. sc.35 (#42) where Daisy originally had dialogue! This is right before the "Out of Picture Because of Change in Story" bit...

Thad, I think that the Disney cartoons have a lot less variation in how the characters were drawn than at other studios. One of the ways Disney spent his big budgets was on assistants who conformed the drawings to the model sheets. If they could make Fergie's Pluto look on-model, then it was no problem to do the same for an animator like Emery Hawkins.

Actually, I was also kind of referring to when Hawkins went back to Disney in 1945. His work is very noticeable in the short "Donald's Dream Voice", as it's the wonderful style he's known for.

The trouble is, Donald has the 'blank stare' that worked perfectly for characters like Woody Woodpecker and Daffy Duck, but it doesn't work for the 'realism' of Don. Hawkins' animation of the thug who 'hates peoples' and the talking cow is excellent though.

I watched the cartoon while looking at the draft... a few short scenes in the draft didn't make it into the cartoon or are incorporated into other scenes (and the description of scene 9.01 is just strange) - but more "importantly", what you call scene 47 isn't in the draft at all - it seems to be added latter on like the infamous front view of popcorn-powered Donald.

About Me

I've worked as an animator, writer, producer and director in TV animation for 29 years. I created the cgi series Monster By Mistake.
I hold a Masters degree from York University in Cinema and Media Studies and am currently teaching animation at Sheridan College.
I can be contacted at mark(dot)mayerson(at)sheridanc(dot)on(dot)ca.